Do Contexts Matter for Willingness to Donate to Natural Disaster Relief? An Application of the Factorial Survey

Abstract

Research on charitable giving mostly investigates the effects of various donor characteristics on willingness to donate. Analyzing intentions of charitable giving to natural disaster relief, the first aim of this article is to show how situational characteristics of the recipientsthat is, country contexts and disaster specificities-matter. Theoretical propositions for the effects of recipient contexts and donor attributes are derived from basic mechanisms of prosocial behavior that appear recurrently in the interdisciplinary literature. A factorial survey is used to investigate the impact of context variations. Introducing this method to the study of charitable giving is our second objective. Multilevel analyses based on a sample of 430 German students show that the effective allocation of donations and a devastating catastrophe in a needy country such as Bangladesh yield the highest contributions. In addition, the national in-group is treated favorably. Among donor characteristics, prosocial values and empathy are relevant. Keywordsprosocial behavior, transnational charitable giving, natural disaster, factorial survey Private donations to natural disaster relief campaigns are a well-known example of prosocial behavior in general and of charitable giving in particular. Donations to the Article at FLORIDA INTL UNIV on May 28, 2015 nvs.sagepub.com Downloaded from cAfter negatively keyed items are recoded, factor analysis is used to construct an index from eight of the ten items (items excluded due to low factor loadings:"I am not interested in other people's problems," "I feel spiritually connected to other people"). Index values are allocated if respondents answered at least half of the items.

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“…4. To identify potential donor segments who may be predisposed to types of charities defined by charitable and political attitudes, thereby addressing an area of charitable marketing which has received limited consideration (Andorfer & Otte, 2013).…”

Embedded Government Control and Nonprofit Revenue Growth

“…For example, the literature has identified that donors’ willingness to give is conditional on contextual factors. Andorfer and Otte () find that donors are more likely to give the highest level of contributions in two situations: (1) when there is a devastating disaster, such as the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004 or the Haiti earthquake in 2010, and (2) when they perceive that charitable organizations can effectively allocate their donations to these victims. Saxton, Neely, and Guo () find that American donors’ willingness to give is positively related to the organization's level of financial and performance disclosure.…”

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“…Much is known about the broader determinants of charitable giving (best reconciled by Bekkers and Wiepking 2011a). However, such research has come at the expense of understanding charitable choice (Andorfer and Otte 2013;Breeze 2013) and in particular what drives international charity donations (Wiepking 2010). Donors do not share their generosity equally (Strombach et al 2014), with data from both Europe and North America demonstrating that donors prioritise domestic over international causes (Casale and Baumann 2015;Micklewright and Schnepf 2009).…”